In this in-depth study, Mayer recounts how three pivotal figures in Europe, Karl Marx; Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist theorist; and Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch film maker murdered by an Islamic terrorist, changed the trajectory of civil society and by extension Western civilization.

He calls the merging of Marxism and Islamism an "unholy alliance" whose aim is to dismantle and destroy Western civilization. Islamists share the same goals as the left, to subvert and destroy civil society and the established order. Both ideologies seek to foment revolution to overturn the established order and replace it with their radical utopian vision. Ideologues such as Marx and Sayyid Qutb, the founder of modern Islamism, were motivated by antipathy toward Western values and democratic freedoms, which Marx perceived as materialism and Qutb as immorality.

Mayer believes "both of these philosophies must be viewed as enemy threat doctrines" and calls Marxism "the sharia of the left." The author warns that "when nations lose their souls, their days are numbered." Mayer shouts out a wake-up call about the disintegration of democracy and provides the intellectual arsenal to combat it.

Beila RabinowitzMilitant Islam Monitor

Related Topics:Beila Rabinowitz | Spring 2018 MEQreceive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing listThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.